Yes subscribe need group.id because each consumer in a group can dynamically set the list of topics it wants to subscribe to through one of the subscribe APIs.Kafka will deliver each message in the subscribed topics to one process in each consumer group. This is achieved by balancing the partitions between all members in the consumer group so that each partition is assigned to exactly one consumer in the group
assign will manually assign a list of partitions to this consumer. and this method does not use the consumer's group management functionality (where no need of group.id)
The main difference is assign(Collection) will loose the controller over dynamic partition assignment and consumer group coordination
It is also possible for the consumer to manually assign specific partitions (similar to the older "simple" consumer) using assign(Collection). In this case, dynamic partition assignment and consumer group coordination will be disabled.
subscribe
public void subscribe(java.util.Collection topics)
The subscribe method Subscribe to the given list of topics to get dynamically assigned partitions. and if the given list of topics is empty, it is treated the same as unsubscribe().
As part of group management, the consumer will keep track of the list of consumers that belong to a particular group and will trigger a rebalance operation if one of the following events trigger -
Number of partitions change for any of the subscribed list of topics
Topic is created or deleted
An existing member of the consumer group dies
A new member is added to an existing consumer group via the join API
assign
public void assign(java.util.Collection partitions)
The assign method manually assign a list of partitions to this consumer. and if If the given list of topic partitions is empty, it is treated the same as unsubscribe().
Manual topic assignment through this method does not use the consumer's group management functionality. As such, there will be no rebalance operation triggered when group membership or cluster and topic metadata change.